Doctors say faith is part of a healthy lifestyle

DIANE CAMERON, ALBANY TIMES UNION

Published
5:30 am CDT, Thursday, May 7, 2009

ALBANY, N.Y. — You want to live long and look good, so you do everything the experts suggest: You eat salmon, wear sunscreen, lift weights and jog. You floss, eat five fruits a day; take your vitamin D and you pray.

Yes, God is now part of a healthy lifestyle.

It turns out that God can save your life as well as your soul. According to the newest research on aging and health, we need to hit both the treadmill and our knees on a regular basis. This new push for God isn’t coming from the church folks, but rather from doctors, specifically neurologists.

Dr. Andrew Newberg is the spokesman for the new field of neurotheology and author of How God Changes Your Brain .

Newberg and co-author Mark Robert Waldman delineate research showing the impact of prayer, faith, meditation and, yes, exercise on longevity and health.

They rank the ways that we can improve our brain function — the overall key to long life. While aerobic exercise is number three, it turns out that the very best thing you can do for your brain is to have faith.

When asked if God isn’t just a placebo, Newberg points out, “Placebos cure, on average, 30 percent of most physical and emotional illnesses. But you have to believe in the placebo.”

Belief is his point.

Can’t you just hear this at the gym: “What’s your workout?” “Oh, I do 20 minutes on the elliptical, 20 minutes of weights and a couple of rosaries.”

Newberg and Waldman included an extensive appendix which lays out all the research.

But this begs the question of where and how. Should we go to church? Organized religion is suffering; churches and synagogues have diminishing congregations where the average age is in the high 60s. And there are the scandals and problems.

But there is something else. The selling of belief as self-improvement strikes me as another kind of materialism, albeit a spiritual one. We typically recognize consumerism in the race to bigger houses, cooler cars or the latest techno-gadget. But maybe in a recession we drop those in favor of other kinds of consumption, like using God for your own good. In most faith systems, the goal or end point is about turning away from self and toward others.

There is a paradox here: Trying to be more spiritual for selfish ends knocks you right off the spiritual path. But maybe God doesn’t care; maybe he’s OK with being the bait to catch himself.

We don’t have to throw the baby out with the holy water. Now, with this new proof in the existence of belief-brain fitness, we don’t have to choose between the church and the gym.